22. Park in a Pod

Typical infrastructure projects – like parks, street bump-outs – costs municipalities a lot of capital. Those projects take a long time to design and implement (sometimes years or longer); they involve significant amounts of political and social involvement, talking each aspect through to ensure the best results; and they cost hefty sums of money. Tactical urbanism by contrast – a collection of low-cost, temporary changes to the built environment – avoid the typical pitfalls of public infrastructure projects, as a beta-test for potential improvements. They raise awareness for ways to improve the built environment outside the typical implementations and they can be a great public outreach tool. This week, 100 Ideas Project will be celebrating Pop-up spaces, one instrument in the Tactical Urbanism toolkit.

California Sierra Chapter of ASLA: “PARK-in-a-POD is an on-demand mobile community outreach platform that consists of easily-movable outdoor furniture stored in a Portable On-Demand Storage (PODS) unit. The POD is delivered to the site of a community event and then the furniture is arranged on-site to facilitate community engagement. Additional event-specific materials/resources are brought to the site to support community outreach, as required. After the event, the outdoor furniture is placed back into the POD and returned to storage.”